Copy and paste is one of the best features we have at our fingertips, especially when combined with keyboard shortcuts. You can’t argue that copying and pasting is one of the most common things we all do, no matter what technical skill you might have.

But there has always been a gap in the copy and paste method. That is that once you copy something, you better intend to paste it somewhere else right away or you might forget and overwrite it. Why can’t there be a larger capacity on the clipboard – seems pretty simple, I’d say. There are, however, programs that can provide this function for you.

Reader-Recommended Utilities

The subject of clipboard management utilities is no scarce topic on MakeUseOf. In fact, there have been several articles in the past that have featured some of the best. However, residing in the comments of those articles have been some excellent suggestions of programs made by you, the readers. So below, here are six excellent clipboard management utilities which are all unique in their own way.

Kana Clip is a free, simple, portable and compact program. It functions via the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Alt + Insert (occasionally abbreviated “ins”). You can see in the screenshot above what the context menu looks like and there are some options that branch off it as well.

Currently Kana Clip is Windows-only. It’s features include adding the current time and date managing the permanent clips, using permanent clips to add predefined text and create sub menus to manage text better, refreshing the clipboard monitoring process if interrupted by another program and hiding the system tray icon.

Clipboard History

Recommended by a reader in the comments of the MakeUseOf article, The 3 Best Clipboard Managers For WindowsThe 3 Best Clipboard Managers For WindowsThe 3 Best Clipboard Managers For WindowsThe Windows clipboard can only hold one single item, so whenever you copy something else, the previous item will be discarded. If you didn't mean to lose what you had copied earlier that can be...Read More, Clip History is a great option if you want more of an interface than what Kana Clip provides. The left pane is the History – what you’ve recently copied to the clipboard. The right pane is known as Stickies, or permanent clips, which can’t be overwritten like the history. This is great for things that you know you will need to access further in the future, such as canned email responses.

One feature that really stands out with Clipboard History is how it handles links. Have you ever received a link in a message that was so long it was broken up and was no longer hyperlinked? No worries. Just copy the entire link, Clipboard History will join the link back together and all you have to do is paste it into your browser and go.

Clipboard history is available for Windows and is also capable of being run off a USB device, such as a flash drive or portable hard drive.

PhaseExpress is a very full-featured clipboard managing utility. It has a tree-style folder structure for managing all sorts of folders. It came with some preset categories, but you can add and remove any to customize it to your own liking.

If you’re a Windows Sidebar fan, this one is for you. Clipboard Manager is an awesome gadget which has lightly been covered and mentioned in a couple of articles on MakeUseOf as well as being recommended by you in the comments.

I was quite impressed at the overall usability. Like all gadgets, you just download and add it to the sidebar and it’s ready to use. No installation needed.

Clipboard Manager is the only utility so far in this article that has been compatible with both images and text, which was a nice surprise. Of course you can customize the color, history capacity, font size as well as several other options.

Hamsin Clipboard

Hamsin Clipboard is somewhat between some of the others that have been previously mentioned already. It has an abundant amount of features, with the lack of any real user interface aside from the configuration window and context menus. That said, it’s a very powerful utility controlled through hotkeys (keyboard shortcuts) and pop up menu via the tray icon.

To give you an idea of what all it can do, below are the three images displaying each of the tabs in the configuration window.

Hamsin Clipboard tracks the history of the last 10 clips and can paste several copied clips automatically one after the other or even merged together. It also can save favorite or commonly used clips for future use.

Whenever you copy a link, text or image, it is displayed in the preview column to the right. But what is more impressive is that when links are copied, the preview isn’t just a link or even a snapshot of the page, but completely interactive. This means if you want to select more info through the page and copy it, you can. Not to mention you can click links, even play videos.

There are a lot of customizations that you can access by right clicking the tray icon and going to Options. From that same context menu you can access the Global Hot Keys, import clips, add new clips, access the help window and disconnect Ditto from the clipboard.

That’s because for the basics of a clipboard manager you really don’t need a whole lot of settings. The majority of the settings usually are overwhelming to the average user and they tend to just stop using those programs altogether.

With the simple keyboard command Ctrl + Shift + V, you instigate a context menu with the past 10 (or more) items in the history of your clipboard. Note that both the keyboard command and maximum history size can be adjusted.

Once it’s running, start copying away. You can see what is all on your clipboard by left-clicking on the tray icon. There are some advanced search options and you can see that ControlC supports images, text and files.

Conclusion

There are more than just ten clipboard management utilities and perhaps you use one that is not on this list. But, likely it’s on MakeUseOf somewhere. Below are a few more clipboard management utilities that we’ve written about:

Do you currently use a clipboard management tool? Did you even know there was an option for such? I can tell you that when I started using one, it changed how I used any text-based program. Share your thoughts and experiences of using a clipboard manager with us in the comments.

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Dallas Cao

August 28, 2017 at 2:56 am

Try CopiPasta, it doesn't even require you to learn a new shortcut. It's still Ctrl C and Ctrl V with a memory.

The Windows clipboard is often used not only because it's useful, but also because it's simple. Tt seems Only CopiPasta understands the importance of simplicity, speed and reliability, while other clipboard managers are loaded with too much features and options.

Today I tried Ditto. After installation on Win7 backspace malfunctions. Most of the time Quick paste does not work. While tryong to launch the application from the system tray the app gets stuck. Not so good as praised in the blog. Now uninstalled it.

Thanks for your post. I've installed and tried ControlC, but I can't see it doing any web-based synchronisation. It just seems to be giving me a locally encrypted page of previous clipboard items. Am I doing something wrong or missing something? How did you get an online version of your clipboard?

And do you or others know of any clipboard apps that sync automatically/instantly to a web service?

I've tried various clipboard managers, but still return to Clipmate. Far more than just copy and paste. Includes image clipping and conversions, wonderful for producing mailing labels, loads of possible uses. Not free but worth every penny.

Aaron is a Vet Assistant graduate, with his primary interests in wildlife and technology. He enjoys exploring the outdoors and photography. When he's not writing or indulging in technological findings throughout the interwebs, he can be found bombing down the mountainside on his bike. Read more about Aaron on his personal website.